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J-FUZZ A FAITHFUL RECREATION OF THE OLD ORIGINAL JENNINGS FUZZ FROM THE LATE 60s.
Tom Jennings was the founder and master-mind of the VOX company in the late 50s, companied by his friend and technician Dick Denney, who engineerd the famous VOX AC30 amp as well as the VOX Defiant transistor amp with a built-in fuzz circuit - both amps became well-known and famous because of the Beatles, who used this amps.
After some troubled times Jennings sold the VOX label to the Royston Group in 1967 and left the company together with Dick Denney. In 1969 Tom established his new label Jennings (Jennings Electronic Development), again with Dick Denney at his side, building stompboxes, fuzz, WahWah and more. For some time, Jennings also built his products under some OEM labels, eg. Roto Sound. The production stopped in 1973. Especially the fuzz from 1969 was different from the similar products other companies built at this time.
The Jennings fuzz, like most fuzz boxes at this time, used two silicone transistors, but had a much milder and rounder tone than all the others. With the volume control fully opened, the sound was warm, full and incredibly fat - a tone that reminds on an old germanium fuzz, very different from the typical penetrating silicone fuzz tone we all know. This fuzz circuit was engineerd by Dick Denney, and one of his master pieces. In the early version of this fuzz box, he used transistors from the japanese Micro Electronics company and BSM is proud to say, that we were able to get a bunch of this NOS transistors, using them exclusively for the BSM J-Fuzz. Some time later, Dick Denney substituted this japanese transistors with a european type, overhauled the circuit and so the sound changed.
Well-known users of the early Jennings fuzz (1st version) were Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Dave Edmunds, Paul McCartney and many more.
The J-Fuzz should be connected directly after the guitar in the signal path, because its magical tone is best achieved by the interaction between guitar player, guitar pickup and Fuzz unit. The J-Fuzz is powered by a 9V battery or extern 9V power supply with a current consumption of aprox. 2mA. The average output level is -5dBm, the maximum output voltage is 0.4V max, when the strings are struck really hard. Note: The negative pole of the battery is ground.
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